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Roots recordings

While I'm not a big fan of most of today's hip-hop, I was and remain a fan of the "old school" tracks. Many of these songs came out just as electronic music was becoming popular, and were the forerunners of many genres including rap, house and electronica. Here's what I have in my collection:

SUGARHILL GANG - Rapper's Delight: The song that started it all. The original full-length version is about 15 minutes long. Even the 7" mix was about 6 minutes

BLONDIE - Rapture: Worth mentioning as the song that brought rapping to mainstream (read white) audiences. Both this track and "Rapper's Delight" include the actual words "hip-hop" in the rhymes. Exists in three versions: the album version from AUTOAMERICAN (last verse is omitted), the 12" version (contains all verses plus an extended "dub" section featuring a salsa whistle), and the version appearing on THE BEST OF BLONDIE, which is an edit of the 12" version--I would venture to guess that this last one is the version familiar to most listeners

GRANDMASTER FLASH AND THE FURIOUS FIVE - The Message: The beginning of rap with a political message

GRANDMASTER AND MELLE MEL - White Lines: Continuing in the same vein as the previous track, this time the rhymes carried a specific warning against cocaine. Still a *killer* dance track, with one of the simplest, most hypnotic bass lines ever, and a super horn section to boot

MAN PARRISH - Hip Hop, Be Bop (Don't Stop); Boogie Down Bronx: Moving more towards house and electronica, the first of these two tracks didn't have any lyrics at all except the words in the title, heard only a few times

HASHIM - Al-Naafyish (The Soul): As above, the emphasis was on the beats and the synths, with no lyrics beyond the title words, processed through an old-style vocoder

NEWCLEUS - Jam On It: Another classic rap tune. No political message, just a somewhat humourous lyric about getting down

STRAFE - Set It Off: As above. The artist's name is pronouced "straff"

This stuff was all very big when I first started going to dance clubs in the mid-1980s

djprobed



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Topic - Roots recordings - djprobed 08:11:58 06/11/04 (2)


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